When you’re talking about the Oregon Ducks’ defense, the stats don’t tell the whole story.
If you were just to look at the box score, you would see a team that gives up on average almost 30 points per game, and even lets bad offenses get into the end zone. However, if you watched the game, you’d see that most of the production opponents get has come in garbage time, long after the outcome of the game has been decided.
That fact has been displayed perfectly by Geoff Schwartz, a current football analyst and former Oregon Duck. Check out the numbers that he laid out over the weekend:
The amount of points this season Oregon has allowed in the final 17 minutes of blow out wins is remarkable. We'd speak much differently about this defense w/o these points
BYU 13 points (20 total)
Stanford 17 points (27 total)
UCLA 14 points (30 total)
Cal 14 points (24 total)— Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) October 29, 2022
The defense can certainly get better, but it’s easy to see that they’re better than the stats show if you watch the game.
As we do every week, we wanted to see where the stats place Oregon in the grand scheme of things, and how they rank nationally. Here’s how it all shakes out after Week 8: